Lighting it up, Gus and namelessness

Want a quick tip to make nighttime a little easier if your child is a pain in the neck going to sleep? Hang up string lights around their room—out of reach, of course. N was the first to get the light treatment (even though he’s a breeze getting to sleep besides L having to lie in bed with him until he passes out). We opted for the white lights. A few days later I put up lights in G’s room—multicolored—and N had a near meltdown. He wanted the multicolored lights, “because they have blue in them.” So I reminded him that we had to take down his to put in G’s room, which he begrudgingly agreed to. Crisis averted.
On a somewhat unrelated note, Gus, our Elf on the Shelf, has returned once again. N charges out of his room every morning intent on finding Gus, and G has even gotten into the mix, pointing excitedly and smiling when he sees Gus for the first time. Honestly, I have no idea how I made it through my childhood without finding my elf on the shelf. And part of me feels guilty for doing it because it’s so ridiculous, but I didn’t buy it (it was a gift from my mother). Might as well embrace it and do it for the kids because we all know, those of us with kids, that happy kids make for easier days.
Gus has shown up atop the Christmas tree, trapped in the stemware cabinet, sitting on N’s basketball hoop attached to his closet door, rappelling down from the crawl space, on the bookshelf, on the fan … you get the idea. I am running out of places to hide this guy, but I’ll persevere. Maybe one night I’ll hide him outside, that’ll really throw them off the trail.
But one thing that happened this year that’s new (thanks to a dad blogger I’m ‘friends’ with) is that when N or G (mostly N) misbehaves for a majority of the day, Gus still appears, but with his back to the room. It’s his passive-aggressive way of showing that he’s not happy with the previous day’s behavior. I explained it to N, and it’s now in the back of his mind despite it not totally stopping him from knocking G to the ground from time to time. So yeah, Gus is back. Gus. This is what N wanted to name him, leading me to the third point of this post, the name, or lackthereof, of Baby No. 3.
As I mentioned before, deciding on a name for Baby No. 3 has been pretty difficult. We’re a little past the halfway point of the pregnancy yet no closer to figuring out a name than we were months ago. N still wants us to name him something with Chalk in it, whether it be first, middle or last name. Not happening.
We like Luke but G’s middle name is Lucas, so that’s out. I keep hearing names at N’s school, so they’re progressively getting crossed off the list. We might not have a name but I’m not losing any sleep over it, we’ll get there.
Oh, and Christmas and Festivus will have already passed by time this goes live, so I hope everyone had a happy and safe one and those who celebrate Kwanzaa are enjoying their holiday.​